History 1807 Lecture 14: Adam Smith
15 Nov 2016
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He places self interest in the very heart of what is going on in this economy. He describes this interest as a public virtue. He never believed that people should accumulate so much money, but if they do then the public should benefit from it. Self interest is key in his idea. He"s trying to get the people to exercise their own power in the market place, thus this whole idea of capitalism becomes liberalism (this is where we ended last week) He is calling on the state to remove the barriers of trade. By the 18th century there is a finite amount of wealth in the world, as individuals and countries were becoming richer at this time. Thus, in order to get this wealth, you have to go out and explore the new world. Smith was proposing free trade, but he questioned this at the time when britain was calling for free trade.
